Building LGBTQ API power to amplify our voices and increase visibility of our communities. Through organizing, we inspire and train leaders, establish intergenerational connections, and document and disseminate our histories.

Environmental Justice

The goal of APIENC’s TTAC (Think and Take Action Cohort) is to bring together and inspire queer and transgender Asian and Pacific Islander (QTAPI¹) people in the SF Bay Area to engage and take action to stop climate and environmental injustices, particularly as they affect Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC²) in the SF Bay Area and worldwide.

Image description: A selfie of APIENC members. People smile and look towards the camera, with some peace signs up

Early in the summer of 2018 APIENC members began to critically discuss the place of QTAPI identity and experience within environmental and climate justice movements. TTAC formed shortly after as a means for QTAPIs to show up collectively during this intense period of climate catastrophe. Some of TTAC’s first actions in September 2018 centered on supporting frontline communities and grassroots activists most impacted by climate disasteras they mobilized to disrupt closed-door meetings between politicians and business leaders.

To accomplish our goal, we will:

Educate ourselves and our communities, as QTAPIs, on the impacts of climate and environmental injustices particularly on BIPOC living in the SF Bay Area and worldwide, in a way that is accessible, hopeful, and fun, and builds community.

Build and support the leadership of QTAPI community members to take on and support real, rather than false, solutions³ for climate change and to act collectively as a unique voice in the larger movement for climate and environmental justice.

Support as allies and coalition partners to other SF Bay Area BIPOC who are working to end climate and environmental injustices.

Engage with grassroots community leaders and members of local regenerative economies to promote climate justice. Challenge and work to dismantle the destructive businesses and state policies that are harming our communities and environment.

Build capacity in the larger climate and environmental justice movement to address and dismantle the systems of ableism, racism, classism, and misogyny that disproportionately impact queer and trans people.

Image Description: Three APIENC friends stand with signs at a march. One sign says, “we need a just transition from fossil fuels”

Do you want to be involved in strengthening our internal knowledge around climate catastrophe, just transition, and regenerative economies? Are you excited to build stronger relationships with other grassroots organizations working to address climate change? Down to promote local action and the transformational resilience in our community? Email sammie@apienc.org to get involved!

¹We use the term QTAPI to include and speak to a community of Asian and Pacific Islander people who identify variously as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender nonconforming, queer, and intersex who are politically united around being queer and transgender.

²We use the term BIPOC as acknowledgement of how white supremacy unevenly impacts different groups of people of color. Specifically, Black and Indigenous folks have endured and continue to endure the deepest societal and state violence, climate catastrophe, poverty, and incarceration and are deep leaders in creating real solutions to these oppressions.

³Our understanding of real/false solutions comes from the thinking and work of various Indigenous community leaders and Indigenous-led environmental and climate justice groups. More info can be found here and here. We will continue to learn and grow our understanding of the real/false solutions framework.